By Kirsten Robinson

You’ve been told that Speech Analytics has the power to mine, categorize, and analyze audio—in turn, helping to boost QA performance, identify opportunities for process improvements, and identify sales leads.

But, does SA actually work?

We recently spoke with CCC members Ann Glover, Director of Business Performance and Quality Global Reservation Services and Customer Care, and Robby Morehead, Specialist in Business Processes at InterContinental Hotels Group, who described how they’ve leveraged Speech Analytics. They offered insights such as:

• Vendor selection: Make sure the vendor offers the right array of functionalities (and this may sound more simplistic than it really is)
• Hidden costs: Have a good sense for how you’re going to use the tool so that you can budget accordingly (rather than deciding along the way that you “need” various add-ons at unanticipated additional charges).

CCC members, learn more about how IHG implements Speech Analytics by reading excerpts from our Q&A with Ann Glover and Robby Morehead.

Related CCC Research:

• Speech Analytics Research Brief
• Vendor Selection Resource Center
• Speech Analytics: Maximizing Your Technology ROI (webinar replay)

This is a guest post by Andrew Kent, who researches and writes for our sister program the Sales Executive Council.  This is the second in a two-part series about the coming revolution in energy sales (read part one here).  Both posts were originally published to the Sales Challenger blog.

In my previous post, I argued that the conflict of interest between energy & utility companies and their customers makes these companies’ business models unsustainable. In short, the more efficiently customers use energy, the less money energy suppliers make—and customers won’t remain in the dark forever.

The solution, I believe, is to stop selling stuff (kilowatt-hours, therms, or joules) and start selling outcomes (light, heat, and motion). Indeed, one forward-thinking utility company recently shared with us their new Commercial Teaching pitch that focuses B2B customers on the money they could save from energy efficiency building retrofits, and off the price per kilowatt-hour.

It’s a compelling pitch, especially in deregulated markets. The customer saves money off its energy bill (the payback period is typically just 3-5 years), and the supplier picks up a new account.

But while energy investments make economic sense, customers have been surprisingly slow on the uptake, frequently rejecting energy projects that are in their economic self-interest.

For example, a contact in the green building industry warned me that most decision-makers are unreasonably skeptical of energy solutions, due to a lack of case studies proving they work, and the inherent difficulty with quantifying energy savings (i.e., external conditions may cause energy use to increase, even though that increase may be less than it would have been otherwise thanks to energy saving projects.).

Therefore, just as in any case when a customer is not thinking about its business properly, the burden falls on Sales to reframe how customers think about energy use.   (CCC note: We think the same goes for the B2C world…when a customer is only thinking about your product in a single dimension, the burden can fall with serivce and support to reframe that perception.) Read More »

“I need a flight from Phoenix to Washington, DC on Monday morning.”

“I want to return this GPS unit.”

What do these customer requests have in common?  In both situations what the customer needs isn’t necessarily the flight or the product return.  In the first situation, the customer might need to fly to get to an important meeting…or to see his daughter’s dance recital.  And maybe the customer returning the electronic product needs something with more features – or international maps for an upcoming trip to Japan.

Either way, the customer isn’t just going to volunteer this additional info – which makes it hard for the rep to give the customer what they need if the Monday morning flight isn’t available or if the product is outside the window in which it can be returned with a full refund.

So, what to do?  When reps can’t give a customer what they want, they will often default to the first available alternative – or even present the customer with a variety of alternatives.  But, the customer always ends up feeling like the alternative is ‘second best’, often arguing and negotiating to get what they asked for because it is their ‘first choice’.

Fortunately, there is a way to make an alternative seem as good (or even better) as the customer’s ‘first choice.’ Read More »

Customer Service News

• The Voice of the Employee is important to pay attention to. [1to1 Media]

• Will the future of service include a social media caste system? [NYT]

• Is editing customer reviews acceptable? Maybe if you’re correcting their grammar and spelling.  [BNET]

• Be kind about your customers- how you talk about them speaks volumes.  [HBR]

• Get Satisfaction’s app turns Facebook pages into active sites for customer support.  [Washington Post]

• Reverse Groupon? Listening to what customers say to give them the discounts they want.  [WSJ]

By Gauri Subramani

This post is the first in a two-part series on bill formatting and the benefits and downsides of paper bills versus online billing.   Read part two here.

Billing typically isn’t at the fore of contact centers’ ‘to do’ list or customers’ minds, but the accuracy and accessibility of bills can have a significant impact on customer service. Misunderstanding about billing is problematic for both the service organization and for customers, and can even result in (unnecessary) customer contacts. Read More »

It was exactly three years ago today that George Carlin died.  I was really saddened by his passing — not only because he was the first stand-up comic I ever listened to (on scratchy vinyl — how ancient am I?) but because he helped us understand the incredible power of words. Remember his classic bit, “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”?  There are 400,000 words in the English language, but there are just seven you can’t say on TV.  What a ratio — 399,993…to 7!  They must be realllllllly bad!

It’s probably best (for the sake of my continued employment) that I don’t repeat those seven words here, but there is ONE word I’d like to discuss today, that (IMHO) you should never say to a customer… Read More »

On the CCC research team, we’re no strangers to data—in fact, we’re constantly collecting and analyzing all types of data to inform our research studies and help members benchmark their performance. But with more data available today than ever before, companies are increasingly finding themselves in a somewhat ironic position: they actually have more data than they (or more precisely, their systems) can handle.

“Big data”—or data sets so large that they become difficult to work with using typical database management tools—was the focus of a recent report released by The McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of consulting giant McKinsey & Co.

It’s an interesting phenomenon to ponder: essentially, the amount of data we’re collecting is fast outpacing the technology available to analyze it all. We’re reaching a point where the answers to (most) any question are ‘out there’ in the data—we just need to know how and where to find them. Read More »

This is the second in a two-part series on boosting customer loyalty in B2B service and support environments. Click here to reference part one.

In my last post, I discussed CCC’s findings on customer loyalty in the B2B service and support world.  Specifically, I highlighted the opportunity that B2B organizations have to promote end-user positive word of mouth (i.e., loyalty) by teaching their customers something new during the service interaction itself.  And I ended on a question:

What kind of insights should B2B customer support organizations look to deliver to end-users?

I’m back today to answer that question for you. Read More »

• What your customers are being told about how to “win” with customer service- study up, stay calm, and sometimes, make a fuss. [Forbes]
• New financial kiosks automate routine transactions and allow reps to focus on delivering quality customer service. [WSJ]
• Confusing websites drive customers away, with 47 percent turning to an alternative supplier’s website. [CallCentreClinic]
• High-tech customer engagement is the future of business. [NYT]
• Las Vegas Airport’s emphasis on customer service makes travelers’ lives easier. [WSJ]
• Customers are becoming a part of the creative process of fashion design through online platforms.  [Mashable]

Recently, my colleague Lauren and I had a, shall we say, “spirited” debate over the merits of social media as a long-term platform for service.  While I’m not sure who “won” this debate (we’ll let you decide that), I know we can both agree that social media isn’t going away anytime soon, whether service executives like it, or not.  Check out our debate below and let us know what you think … bright, shiny object or, a viable service channel for the long-term?

Pete:  Blogs, Facebook and Twitter are here to stay.  And not just for social purposes, but, as we’ve seen quite a bit in the past couple of years (here and here and here, just to show a few), as vehicles for customers to interact with companies and vice versa.  Now you may not like it (I recently heard a service executive say “I hate Facebook”), but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so you’d better embrace it and learn how to operate in an environment that is the most unique arena for service I’ve ever seen.

Lauren:  Although these channels might be here to stay, I think that their reach tends to be overestimated. 

Read More »